Posted
by
Zonk
on Monday July 23, 2007 @12:30AM
from the actually-has-some-educational-value dept.

NewYorkCountryLawyer writes "The RIAA has added 23 new colleges and universities to its hit list, but deliberately omitted Harvard, apparently afraid of the reaction it's likely to get there, having been told by 2 Harvard law professors to take a hike. 'Under the new scheme, the RIAA sends out what it calls 'pre-litigation' settlement letters. Actually, they're self-incrimination documents and they're designed to extort preset amounts of around $3,000 from students with the empty promise that by paying up, they'll remove the threat of being hauled into court on charges of copyright infringement. In reality, all the students are doing is providing the RIAA with personal and private information which can conceivably be used against them ...'"

What happened to all those engineer-type people who used to hang out on slashdot? They tend to be more rational than this bunch I see.Let's think about this logically.

RIAA has a right to sue anyone they think has committed copyright infringement against one of their members. This is because there is a _law_ that was passed by _congress_ supported by the _constitution_ that gives them this right. Unless you completely reject our system of government, you can't argue that a company is evil for suing someon

I'll agree with you that the arguments presented here, whether or not founded logically, often fail to present their logical foundation and end up sounding like emotional drivel. That being said, stating that a person or entity is 'evil' implies that what they do is somehow immoral. Morality and Legality are two very distinct concepts, and neither is entirely inclusive of the other. In a democratic society, it is true that we strive to make the legal system reflect our collective moral standards and expe

I agree.People can also go for civil disobedience for bad laws (tho these days they forget that includes accepting the punishment).

Riaa are a bunch of thugs and the terms of copyright are unreasonable these days-- however using brand new works without compensating the creators is equally immoral. I remember 7 years ago folks like the ones here were saying on boards like this "well sue the people who are infringing".

They emotionally "want it" so they rationalize their acts. The main problem there is, if th

Let's think about this logically.RIAA has a right to sue anyone they think has committed copyright infringement against one of their members. This is because there is a _law_ that was passed by _congress_ supported by the _constitution_ that gives them this right. Unless you completely reject our system of government, you can't argue that a company is evil for suing someone who violates their rights in this manner.

illegal != evil;legal != !evil;

Logically, just because the law allows you to legally do something evil doesn't make you immune from being called evil when you choose to act on it.

I would disagree, as long as the law is legitimate. If you think that passing laws the way congress does lends them legitimacy, because it allows representation, then it is at least unlikely to be immoral to simply use the rights you're granted under those laws in the way they were intended to be used.

If you think that the system of government, or of legislation, is not legitimate in that sense, then I would agree with you.

I do not believe in the legitimacy of the system, it has been corrupted and the masses are too sheepish to rise up, as is their patriotic duty.

Off the top of my head, the last time a federally-ordered scientific study was done on the reasons for keeping Cannabis in the same legal bracket as heroin, the recommendation was, as it has systematically been for every study in every country for about 40 years, to decriminalize the substance.However the feds said that since tobacco smoke causes cancer, eating pot

The RIAA doesn't have a track record of playing fair in their suits. They've sued people using very little evidence, and have persisted in their cases, often driving innocent people to settle to avoid legal fees.

I'm currently attending one of the schools on the list (not surprising, considering the rampant amount of file sharing that goes on there). I haven't shared music online since the ninth-circuit court of appeals handed down the Napster decision, but if I'm targeted with one of those letters, I suspect my parents will encourage me to pay up rather than face the stress and legal costs of fighting it.

If they send 20 letters to random college students, they'd probably get 15 settlements and 5 court cases - they would then drag out the 5 court cases as long as possible to drive up the legal costs for the defendants in hopes of reaching a settlement. Once it becomes clear they won't reach a settlement and have very little hope of winning their case, they'll ask to dismiss with prejudice so they can avoid paying the legal fees of the defendant. Of all of the 20 original letters, they probably got $45,000 from the 15 who settled right away, and another $30,000 or so from those who settled after going to court - a pretty good haul for random letters.

The reason I vilify the RIAA is not that they are enforcing their copyright, but because their approach does not necessarily target the guilty, and the innocent have almost as much incentive to settle as the guilty. They can rake in the cash by making it more costly to fight a bogus case than to settle, and it's very rare that they're made to pay legal fees. Now, if they were collecting as much evidence as possible and verifying it before pursuing settlements, you wouldn't hear me complain, but their tactics have been much less admirable.

Let's think about this logically.
RIAA has a right to sue anyone they think has committed copyright infringement against one of their members. This is because there is a _law_ that was passed by _congress_ supported by the _constitution_ that gives them this right. Unless you completely reject our system of government, you can't argue that a company is evil for suing someone who violates their rights in this manner.
If you disagree with the law, then the _logical_ thing would be to argue for or work towar

You know what? If you all actually cared, you'd be spending less time on WoW, and more time writing your senators/organizing festivals to educate the public/burning crosses/whatever it takes. It is obvious the court system doesn't have a clue about the whole picture... how many of them do you think read slashdot a day? Probably -2. They need to get the info from somewhere. Make it common knowledge.

Hey, here in Australia, It's not really our place or even possible for us to write to U.S. Senators and Congress people about the state of the law in your country! I completely disagree with what the RIAA is doing, but somehow I think that the members of parliament here will quite happily ignore the state of the 'states, and won't get involved, even if everyone here wrote them about the issue!

Hey, here in Australia, It's not really our place or even possible for us to write to U.S. Senators and Congress people about the state of the law in your country! I completely disagree with what the RIAA is doing, but somehow I think that the members of parliament here will quite happily ignore the state of the 'states, and won't get involved, even if everyone here wrote them about the issue!

Be patient, my friend! These stupid laws will be dumped on your country really soon.

Here in Oz they go by the name ARIA, they are not a great deal different to the US version. The laws are also just as fubar'd as in the US - just ask the lawyer in Melbourne who has a patent on the wheel.

Fortunately the PBS was quarantined from the free trade agreement so we still have reasonable prices for prescription drugs, however everything else covered by IP laws is in the process of being "harmonised with the US" with Ruddock leading the charge ( For non-aussies: Ruddock is our Attorney General an

If the school will not only not lift a finger to protect their students, but hand them over to the RIAA to a silver platter, then don't attend these colleges!

I take it that you have some meaningful explanation of why a university should protect students from consequences of a currently unlawful activity. Are we talking about students making highly creative derivative works from copyrighted music? Is copying taking place because the music conveys political protest and got censored? If this is just a student

I take it that you have some meaningful explanation of why a university should protect students from consequences of a currently unlawful activity. Are we talking about students making highly creative derivative works from copyrighted music? Is copying taking place because the music conveys political protest and got censored? If this is just a student who didn't want to pay a tenner for a rap CD, I am not sure what educational/social value is there to protect.

I take it that you have some meaningful explanation of why a university should protect students from consequences of a currently unlawful activity.

If by "currently unlawful activity" you mean trying to extort money from students, then I submit that it is up to you to provide a reason why they should not be protected, rather than the other way around.

Dude, the university is not giving student names to RIAA. Rather, they are just forward letters to students identified by IP addresses. If the "accused" is innocent - as in never having illegally downloaded copyrighted songs while in university - you would bet that he/she will raise a stink and the lawsuit, if any, will be dropped once a probable source of confusion - insecure network, public access to a computer in dorm is explained to the plaintiff.If Bill Gates sent you a letter claiming that you hit his

The universities are:
State University of New York at Morrisville,
Georgia Institute of Technology,
Pennsylvania State University,
University of Central Arkansas,
University of Delaware,
Northern Michigan University,
Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute,
George Washington University,
Ohio State University,
New Mexico State University,
Eckerd College,
University of Minnesota,
California State University - Monterey Bay,
University of Kansas,
University of Missouri - Rolla,
University of San Francisco,
Case Western Reserve University,
Northern Arizona University,
San Francisco State University,
University of Tulsa,
Franklin and Marshall College,
Western Kentucky University,
and the Santa Clara University.

Sigh....Why do Harvard (and the other Ivies) receive so much more sympathy from the media and general public than these sort of anonymous, (and mostly small) state colleges?

Does this mean that the RIAA is deliberately avoiding chasing after those with money? Because, by avoiding the Ivies, that's exactly what they're doing. (GWU being the exception here -- their tuition is frightening)

Even so, given that we're talking about the RIAA, I'd love to see them try to target one of the more high-profile schools,

Playing devil's advocate here for a moment: most college students are willing to settle for 3 grand given their finances. Their parents' money doesn't (generally) come into play here. Of course, if you had a lot of it you could fight the claim. But only if you were provably innocent AND were willing to spend more money on lawyers than it would cost to otherwise settle the case.

If anything, the RIAA is chasing after larger schools. More students leads to more profit with less expense.

As a student at one of the named universities, I can only hope, for their sake and for the students', that the schools take a good hard look at their situations and view their internet account holders as paying customers and not criminals upon first accusation (looking at you, University of Kansas!). Throwing their own students in front of the RIAA bus would only lose them potential (and maybe current) students, and all the revenue they represent.

The obvious solution to this is to change the logging policy and erase the IP logs after a few days. Since there are no laws (yet) that require you to keep any sort of logs, changing this policy would instantly relieve the universities of this uncomfortable position.

Customer? How about considering students members, since after all, they do "apply" and are then "accepted" as a member of the student body. And most colleges and universities have some sort of charter which makes the education of these students the primary goal and focus of the institution.

As a student at one of the named universities, I can only hope, for their sake and for the students', that the schools take a good hard look at their situations and view their internet account holders as paying customers and not criminals upon first accusation (looking at you, University of Kansas!). Throwing their own students in front of the RIAA bus would only lose them potential (and maybe current) students, and all the revenue they represent.

Extortion sure does sound like the right word for these "pre-litigation letters".
Makes me glad I'm Canadian. We just have to pay a ridiculous levy on our iPods and CD-Rs because we're bound to use them to pirate music.

If I lived in Canada and purchased an iPod that included a fee that went straight to the record companies, I'd naturally assume this gave me immunity and just pirate to my hearts content. It's just logical because I've already paid my pirating fee. But hey that's just me.

"If I lived in Canada and purchased an iPod that included a fee that went straight to the record companies, I'd naturally assume this gave me immunity and just pirate to my hearts content. It's just logical because I've already paid my pirating fee. But hey that's just me."

Good news: most of the Canada levies go directly to the artists and bypasses the record labels. The bad news... only Canadian artists.

Assuming the levy gives you immunity is a bad, bad idea. It's a common misperception that the Cana

This is totally off-topic, but I don't remember anyone asking me or any other tax-paying Canadians if we approved of a tax on our iPods.AFAIK, legally, corporations have all the rights that a person does. They are essentially a "person". You're a person too, try going to the government and demanding they do anything and see where you get. I remember 10 or 15 years ago, almost half the population of Quebec (that's ~3 million people) wanted to separate from Canada, which ended up in a referendum on the matter

AFAIK, legally, corporations have all the rights that a person does. They are essentially a "person". You're a person too, try going to the government and demanding they do anything and see where you get.

We need to do this scientifically: I'll try it, and then we'll get someone with as much money as these corporations to try it, and compare results.

When you wish to take somebody to civil court you must first show them your intention to do so.

You must clearly state your grounds for claim and allow the other party reasonable time (weeks to months, usually) to either counter your argument or settle your claim.

If the other party disputes your claim you should attempt to resolve the issue by negotiation before you file. If you make it to court without proof that you attempted to negotiate and the other party claims you refused to enter into negotiations you'll usually get ordered to seek mediation and lose costs as well.

If you have not made steps to solve the matter out of court then you usually cannot take anyone to the civil court. There are, of course, a few exceptions to this rule. This rule exists to prevent every RIAA, Dick and Head from suing every random person for which they can find a name and residential address.

"pre-litigation" letters are the first step before even attending the court registry to file papers.

That said, you also need to be able to identify the person(s)/entity you are filing against along with their residential address. An IP address is not sufficient information to do that. This seems like another RIAA scheme to kill two birds with one stone; fish for information about IP address holders and also cover the pre-litigation step required to actually haul them into the court.

With all that's going on in this industry it makes me sad that so much is being invested in tracking down people who download copyrighted music and movies yet there's millions of unsolved actual crimes including kidnapping, rape and murder each year. What about the drug dealers on the streets?

Q: Why aren't we investing more time and money into catching all the really bad bastards?A: Because it doesn't help corporate suit-wearing wankers get ever fatter pockets and make ever larger "donations" (s/donations/bribes/) to candidates.

When you wish to take somebody to civil court you must first show them your intention to do so.You must clearly state your grounds for claim and allow the other party reasonable time (weeks to months, usually) to either counter your argument or settle your claim.

IANAL. Clearly, by your misguided assertions you are not either.

One does not need to look far to see numerous counter-examples. SCO Group's suits, for example.

There may be some venues where your descriptions begin to apply, but not in US Federal cou

I work as an undergrad for the IT office of one of the universities near the top of the hitlist, and I've personally read the letters that they send. To actually read the letter in person really gives you the feeling like "Holy Hell, they're actually doing this." The letters are such bullshit, and it is obviously just a scam to save them the legal fees of taking people to court. The sad thing is that its working for them, and for backwards reasons; In the first batch our school received (which was about 30 letters), only one student didn't respond to the letter. They got sued, and i assume had to pay up in the end. The RIAA got 30 people's worth of payout from the cost of one court battle. Even if they lost that case, they still wound up with 29 payouts for the cost of 1. I'm sure if no one responded that some people wouldn't be sued, but who wants to take that risk?
While i have a problem with the strong arm court tactics they've been taking in the past few years, at least the "sue everyone" tactic was still properly using the legal system to resolve their disputes. However, these letters are extortion, and its that simple.

It has come to our attention that you've been downloading music illegally at school, we have records of you using one of the file sharing programs that can be found at download.com to recieve the files after being tipped off by your schools IT department.

If you send $3,000 to our paypal account we will not proceed to sue you for upwards of tens of thousands of dollars.
If you prefer you can send cash to P.O. Box 1234 somewhere FU & nobody has to know about this.

The lawyers I've known have been careful about the language they use - the language they quote. The polemic you link to strikes me as singularly adolescent and inflammatory. It will fire up the crowd. Of that much I am sure. But it doesn't tell me what I need to know.

A mafia gang providing high-priced laundry services to a hotel is still extortion if the Feds can prove that cheaper laundry services were the norm in every other laundry company in the same street.Similarly, if RIAA tries to sue the student, the student can claim extortion based on false information, even if the student had been downloading music and sharing the same.

The law works for the student's benefit too.Get a lawer like Ray Beckermann (am not benefitted by this recommendation), or someone good enough and sue RIAA under RICO for sending threatening letters demanding payment.

You don't even need to understand the language written, just highlight words like "sue", "$3000", "failure to pay", etc. with a highlighter and say to the Judge that you received an anonymous note under your door and demand protection.

I think the thing that shocks me most is that many universities law faculties aren't going off on the current cases. I mean, these are supposed to be the 'liberal' part of the law. And ONLY Harvard is PUBLICLY strong enough to defend these charges? Where is that oft touted liberal element in the US university system?

But getting back to the core of the matter, I have to wonder why colleges are bending over about a matter so core to their own liability:

Colleges 'pirate' thousands of documents every year in a way that is NOT allowed by current US copyright law.. and they want to believe it's students.. not professors downloading papers that their library hasn't subscribed to? Taking a hard line on music copyright will only kill the colleges that take it up! They won't only drive away students... but also professors who suddenly can't do their research because of miserable libraries (BU COUGH).

If RIAA was to sue the student based on the information in the letter, they would open themselves to counterclaims of deceptive business practices and even racketeering. Given that a student would be able to declare bankruptcy for any significant judgement while RIAA members have billions of dollars in the bank, risks would far outweigh the benefits of such a lawsuit. I say the letters are exactly what they look like.

As I mentioned in a previous reply, I work for the IT office for one of the universities. Apparently the RIAA has been lobbying congress (duh), as we also received a 20-something page letter from congress which essentially slaps our wrist for being such a naughty school for allowing our students to be such heinous criminals, and provides us with a survey to gauge how we prevent students from committing these crimes. I believe the letter was also sent to all of the top 10 schools in the country. The survey asks questions about how much we limit/filter student access to the internet, whether we monitor student access, whether we report illegal activities, what sort of punishment we inflict on students who get a DMCA complaint, etc. The wording of the letter also seemed to suggest that schools should actually be doing these things. For the record, my school does none of those things, and everyone in the the whole IT and Network office building scoffed at the idea. It's a place of learning, not a prison. I really get the feeling that the RIAA's direct dealings with schools and students wont be a problem in the future if they can somehow convince congress to make it required that schools monitor student access, and prevent students from using certain applications.

Elsewhere on the website, Mike O'Donnell, a University of Chicago law professor, gives a good discussion [p2pnet.net] of why the RIAA's policy of identifying people solely by their "unique" IP address is a load of crap. I'm honestly surprised more people haven't used this kind of a defense when the RIAA targets them. Maybe it's because it's not well-known knowledge yet?

In any case, I'm glad that I'm living off-campus next year as my university is on that list and is now notorious for its one strike policy. WTF is up with the idiots in Kansas anyways?

The IP number given as return address in a packet is provided initially by the actual sender, which may (and in the case of an attacker often does) provide an address used by another interface not at all involved in the production of the packet. So the return IP address in a packet received by an RIAA detection effort does not indicate even the IP address of the actual sender in any reliable way.

So some how, some magical third party C is somehow able to not only forge packets with my IP, but successfully so

Think about the bazillions of open unsecured wifi routers out there that people also often use as a network switch. Someone could easily connect to them and download something 'illegal'--meanwhile the externally visible, internet-routable IP that the RIAA identifies is associated with a customer. RIAA then sues said customer, who had nothing to do with the alleged infringement.

Just like how they "deliberately omitted" the 5,673 other schools not in the list of 23 they didn't omit?

Seems strange to assume that the RIAA is scared just because they picked other targets. They're choices in every other instance seem completely random, why would this one be any different?

This is like saying that MIT is "conspicuously absent" and claiming it is because MIT refused to log traffic for the RIAA on their internal network because of the sheer technical insanity of the request. Correlation != causation.

I couldn't find it in TFA, but my understanding is that Harvard was originally included in the list, but then dropped after it indicated a willingness to fight the RIAA and not sell out its students. I know that Harvard isn't the only college/university fighting the RIAA on this, but I hope that as bigger names start joining the fight, the smaller schools will take their lead and also start saying no to the RIAA.

I haven't seen the letters yet, but it would not be unreasonable to assume that they hold a threat of litigation without there being a factual basis, i.e. an as yet unfounded accusation. IANAL, but if I recall correctly there are laws against that. If their past "evidence" is anything to go by I would actually like to see ONE case that has been proven properly. Just one, to see if they can actually get this to work without abusing the law and mob tactics.

Add to that the fact that no proceedings exist until the RIAA has all your personal details I think it'll be harder creating something that will stand a chance in Court, especially since recent rulings where judges have started to ask the RIAA to follow proper legal process instead of trying to selectively dodge the bits that allow a recipient to ask some rather painful questions. Oh, and why are people asked to self-incriminate?

Copyright infringement is *not* good, but there's such a thing as proof and due process. Even if that is inconvenient, it has to be followed.

... I cannot help but think of the Cock Sparrer [fsworld.co.uk] song "Take 'Em All" about record labels:

We worked our way up from East End pubsTo gigs and back stage passesEx-boxing champs, West End clubsAmericans in dark glassesDriving ten grand cars, they drink in hotel barsThey're even making money in bedThey wouldn't be no loss, they ain't worth a tossIt's about time they all dropped dead.

[Chorus]Take 'em all, take 'em allPut 'em up against a wall and shoot 'emShort and tall, watch 'em fallCome on boys take 'em all

Well tough shit boys, it ain't our faultYour record didn't make itWe made you dance, you had your chanceBut you didn't take itWell, I gotta go make another dealSign another group for the companyI don't suppose we'll ever meet againYou'd better get back to the factory.

> The RIAA has added 23 new colleges and universities to its hit list, but deliberately omitted Harvard, apparently afraid of the reaction it's likely to get there, having been told by 2 Harvard law professors to take a hike.

So I lawyers trained at Harvard Law Degree are pretty sharp. All it took from them was a sternly written letter back, presumably quoting the L.A.W..

Colleges that cave-in should consider, what sort of a message does it send prospective students? "Get your law degree with us, and you too can learn how to fold like a wimp" Probably not the best places to learn about Constitutional Rights.

We've seen ample evidence that an IP address does not necessarily correlate to an individual. In an actual court case, the RIAA would have to also show that copyrighted material exists on the computer in question (through an actual forensic search of the hard drive), that the files were placed in a shared folder that can be accessed by others, that those same files have been actually distributed to others through a P2P network, that no one else has access to the computer in question, that the person in question was actually the one who placed the material there and that the computer has not been compromised through hacking of any kind, etc., etc., etc. WAY easier just to extort a quick $3K a pop through fear.

I wonder why certain schools are targeted, and certain individuals at that school. Are certain universities passed over because they have a law school? A savvy law or pre-law student may well see through the bullshit and give the RIAA a run for its money in court. (And may well have relatives who are lawyers and/or sympathetic professors willing to knowledgably defend them.) Someone in another message said that 30 letters had been sent to the college he works at. Now, unless that is one tiny little college, I find it hard to believe that only 30 students file-share. I wonder if they target specific schools and dorms within those schools because of the type of students likely to be caught up in the dragnet? (I.e., naive freshman, yes; senior pre-law student, no.)

It's not for nothing that so many of you refer to the RIAA as the MAFIAA. The tactics are the same. Tell me, who does the Mafia go after when they run a protection or extortion racket? The big corporation with a bevy of lawyers and a lot of power and influence? Or the small businessman, the store owner who has few resources, barely keeps his head above water, and may well be an immigrant of questionable status or otherwise afraid of losing what little he has? Bingo -- they go after the weak, ignorant, and vulnerable.

The RIAA has been VERY lucky so far in that they have only in a few cases gone after the "wrong" sort of target that will fight back. No matter how careful they are, hopefully sooner or later they will hit a few more people who can really make trouble for them.

Hey Everybody... let's all get together and help out our favorite greedy, draconian, ass monkeys!

Is there anybody out there who'd like to instigate an attack against Yale, Harvard, and the rest of the Ivy League in the name of the RIAA? I mean if they're so hot to trot, smacking colleges up side the head, they should go straight after the big guys! Put them in their place. Put the fear of God into the rest of the Universities in this country! Yeah, that's the ticket!

Someone needs to make them put up, or shut up.

Either their case has merits, and therefore they should be going after every college... or it is groundless, and they're guilty of frivolous lawsuits in the name of extorting those least able to protect themselves from legal harassment. So we need to all step up and let them know, that they can't just go around picking on smaller schools and weaking institutions.

The RIAA wants to poke a horets nest with a stick, they should get all the stinging their money can buy!

You know they will. And eventually the 'big' targets will stand alone and they will cave too. I kind of hope that in the end the RIAA figures out a sufficiently robust DRM that coupled with their legal tactics just drives people away from their content and no one pays it any attention at all. Then maybe Jay-Z and the RIAA can sue each other. Because really your only weapon is to stop paying them for anything at any time for any of their 'content'.

I go to Georgia Tech, which to my surprise was on this list of horribly evil and bad schools. What exactly are the criteria the RIAA used to determine these schools? Tech has a 3-strike policy and has people who actually know what they're doing monitoring the network. First strike = warning, second strike = suspension from network and an interview, third strike = banned from the GT network. Why does the RIAA feel the need to step in on this as well?

This only makes the fact that this campaign is based on preying on ignorance all the more obvious. No law students would fall for this, so they go to schools where they don't have to worry about law students.

OK, the general attitude here is "I'll have my music and nobody is gonna stop me!"The real question is has the RIAA ever won in court? Obviously, the uninformed opinion here is no, but has it happened?

The second point is can anyone be successfully sued in civil court for anything on the Internet? Assuming they do not brag about it on open forums or otherwise admit their actions, it would seem the general opinion here is that since nobody saw you do it, it cannot be proven who did it. Therefore, no respon

In reality, all the students are doing is providing the RIAA with personal and private information which can conceivably be used against them...'"

Hey, I get one or two dozen phishing messages per day. What's one more? If the email filters don't catch it, I can flag it as "spam" (and wish they had a separate "phish" category;-), and I never hear from them again. My gmail account gets about 1200 messages per month in its "Spam" folder, and roughly half of them are now phishing attempts.

So what's the big deal here? Don't these college students know how to recognize a phishing message when they see it?

Someone should explain to them that if they reply, their info will just be added to an "easy marks" database that's sold to other companies, resulting in a flood of other such messages from shady companies looking for naive victims.

We really should be teaching kids to defend themselves on the Net. The first lesson should be not to reply to such solicitations, ever.

Heh. Charlie Neesan is not just "a professor". He's a law professor that started the Berkmen Center for Law and Technology. He's the last guy in America the RIAA wants to annoy. Where do you think Lessig got his ieas on coyright from? He was a student of Charlie's. Charlie is way cool.

Neesan's point is simple and quite legal: the RIAA should not outsource their investigation to universities.

I hope that the RIAA doesn't read./ and that i'm not shooting several fellow alumni and students in the foot with this, but from what I've seen the RIAA has stayed far away from Berklee College of Music even moreso than Harvard. Juilliard too.

I hear about lawsuits and letters against students at many other area schools (BU, BC, etc), but Berklee has always been kept out of it. My guess? The RIAA doesn't want to cause more "real enemies" from their artists. Each year, Berklee kicks out one or two groups

Only if we're surprised to think that people can lie, cheat, threaten, and extort college kids, generally one of the poorest demographics around, for the sake of a couple thousand dollars when they already make millions/billions.

In other words, as much as I'd like to be, I can't say I'm shocked in the least. At this point, the MAFIAA is little more than an extortion ring, trying to squeeze money from wherever you can. "Well, Mr. Dean, you have such a lovely list of students at this college. It'd be a SHAME if a dozen of them were to suddenly drop out because they were sued into oblivion, all because you wouldn't cooperate..."

This isn't about copyright anymore. This isn't about Intellectual Property anymore. This is about a group of thugs in suits trying to use the judicial system to make a quick buck wherever and whenever they can, regardless of the legality or morality of it.

I still wonder if they're really making any money on all of this. I suppose now that they're mass-producing settlement letters, but I'd imagine they're paying their lawyers enough that it would take hundreds of settlements to break even. I think it's more likely to be about fear and power. They just want to frighten everyone away from downloading music, going on the assumption that everyone that would otherwise download music will go out and buy CD's instead. The power rush of being able to create new laws

I would assume that organizations such as this have armies of high end law firms - they type who golf with judges and politicians at 250k per year private golf clubs - on retainer. If the RIAA themselves don't have such lawyers on retainer, you can bet that the multinational entertainment conglomerates do and would gladly provide them.

They're making money as long as they can convince the record companies to pay their dues.The RIAA doesn't need to make money on law suits. Any profits there are just a way of minimizing their expenses. Where they make their money is from the dues that they collect from the member companies. You know, Vanguard, Sony, etc.

Calling them a gang of racketeers isn't that far wrong, though, and may be technically accurate. But somehow you don't see these people being assaulted with RICO. Are they technically g

No, it's not surprising at all, but it sure is infuriating, especially considering that my school (University of Delaware) is on that list. Thankfully I don't live in the dorms or use the campus network for sharing, so I'm not worried, but it's still horribly wrong if they cooperate. I plan on writing the president a letter about this, maybe even getting a petition going.

Thus far, two of my friends have been accused of file sharing by the University and neither of them even do it. Most of my friends DO share music, and those ones haven't gotten caught yet. Of course, neither of my friends who did get "caught" were allowed to appeal the decision so they both had to pay IT services $100 to "clean" their computers (the cost was regardless of whether or not anything was found) and they lost their internet access for a month.

State University of New York at MorrisvilleGeorgia Institute of TechnologyPennsylvania State UniversityUniversity of Central ArkansasUniversity of DelawareNorthern Michigan UniversityRensselaer Polytechnic InstituteGeorge Washington UniversityOhio State UniversityNew Mexico State UniversityEckerd CollegeUniversity of MinnesotaCalifornia State University - Monterey BayUniversity of KansasUniversity of Missouri - RollaUniversity of San FranciscoCase Western Reserve UniversityNorthern Arizona UniversitySan Francisco State UniversityUniversity of TulsaFranklin and Marshall CollegeWestern Kentucky Universityand Santa Clara University.

I have to say that I am surprised that Penn State is on that list -- Penn State for a few years now has given us Napster subscriptions to legally download music to circumvent this problem -- this year they finally changed to Ruckus, but the same idea still holds. What is it that the RIAA is looking for if we had a legal way to download music?

Record companies prosecuting people who take their products without paying are just defending their business. get some fucking perspective.

They are selectively prosecuting people who have the least means to defend themselves (such as college students), and are using tactics like ex parte prosecution, insisting on deposing ten year old girls face-to-face, and a host of other evils. Plus, copyright terms have gotten to be absolutely ridiculous.

Not quite. First this is civil court stuff not criminal court and they are handled entirely differently. Second, Plea deals are such an abortion of justice it is unreal, and its not for the silly extortion claim. Frequently what it boils down to is that the higher crime will take longer to deal with in court, but they still want to get the criminal, so the criminal's lawyer says "hey, you are guilty as sin, and they can probably prove it, but if you plea to this lesser deal you will get a lighter sentenc

In the child-molester scenario you give, I don't see how that's an "abortion of justice." Sure, ideally the molester would be convicted fully of the crime and receive the full sentence, but surely it's better to get a conviction of some kind and avoid further harm to the victim, than to either have the offender go free completely or to continue traumatizing the child.Also, plea-bargains are an absolutely necessary tool for fighting organized crime. Low-level gangsters may be very bad people, but their bos